Montana Western men crack top 10; Carroll College continues slide

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The Frontier Conference has a team back inside the top 10 of the NAIA Men’s Basketball Coaches’ Top 25 Poll, which was released Tuesday.

Montana Western has won six of its past seven games to climb from it’s previous No. 16 ranking to No. 8. The Bulldogs are 17-4 overall and 7-3 in league play to top the Frontier Conference standings.

Carroll College (14th) and Lewis-Clark State (19th) are also ranked in the top 25, but no other Frontier Conference teams even received votes.

The Saints, who started the season with a program-record 15 consecutive wins, continued to slide down the rankings. They were ranked as high as No. 2 at one point, but were 10th in the Jan. 16 rankings and fell to 14th this week. Carroll (18-4) is just 3-4 in its past seven games, but most recently defeated Rocky Mountain College 90-63 on Saturday.

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L-C State, meanwhile, has dropped three consecutive games, losing a home game to Carroll before road losses at Montana State-Northern and the University of Providence.

William Penn (Iowa) received all nine first-place votes to maintain its hold on the No. 1 ranking. The Master’s (Calif.), Columbia (Mo.), LSU Shreveport (La.) and Lindsey Wilson (Ky.) complete the top five.

Slim Kimmel, a Winnett native, re-joined the MTN sports team in January 2016. A fan first and sports reporter second, Slim can usually be found wrapped up in basketball or football games of all levels. On the rare occasions he isn’t, Slim enjoys exploring the outdoors and traveling the world.